Lee Epstein es la Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor en la Washington University (St. Louis). Sus intereses de investigación se centran en derecho e instituciones legales, especialmente en el comportamiento de los jueces. Es fellow de la American Academy of Arts and Sciences y de la American Academy of Political and Social Science. También es co-directora del Center for Empirical Research in the Law, profesora visitante en la Universidad de Chicago, investigadora principal del proyecto U.S. Supreme Court Database, y co-editora del Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization. Ha recibido 12 becas y subvenciones de la National Science Foundation, es autora o co-autora de más de 100 artículos y ensayos y de 17 libros, incluyendo "The Choices Justices Make", ganadora del Pritchett Award al mejor libro sobre derecho y cortes y, recientemente, del Lasting Contribution Award en el mismo campo.  Sus libros más recientes incluyen "The Behavior of Federal Judges", escrito junto a with William M. Landes y Richard A. Posner (Harvard University Press), y "An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research", escrito junto a Andrew D. Martin (Oxford University Press). En septiembre de 2016, recibirá el Lifetime Achievement Award de la sección Derecho y Cortes de la American Political Science Association.

Abstract: Prominent theories of judicial behavior assume that judges are rational policy maximizers. Experimental data, however, suggest that judges, no less than all other humans, rely on emotions and intuitions to make fast decisions without checking them against the slower deliberation that rational decision making requires. To assess convergence between experimental and observational results, we explore whether one non-rational factor, emotion in the form of in-group bias, alters what we would expect to observe if Supreme Court justices acted rationally. We find that liberal justices are (overall) more supportive of free speech claims than conservative justices (just as rational policy accounts assume). But we also find that the votes of liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the speech’s ideological grouping (just as in-group bias accounts predict). These results suggest the importance of new research programs devoting to evaluating how rational and non-rational factors influence judicial behavior.